Tale of a Toilet

About two weeks ago my toilet starting flushing all by itself. Not completely flushing, though. The bowl didn’t completely empty, and the toilet would run for about a minute instead of the usual three or so.

My first line of defense was to ignore it.

Then it happened again.

This prompted a greater awareness from me. Which means, I actually thought about it for a few minutes. Then I started noticing it self-flushing more and more. In fact, it seemed to flush itself every 20 to 30 minutes. Once I realized this frequency, then I became alarmed. If you figure a regular toilet flush uses about a gallon of water (I guess; I have no idea), then this malfunction was costing me a gallon an hour, twenty-four gallons a day.

Now, twenty-four-gallons-a-day may not seem like much to you, but it does to me. Again, off the top of my head, doesn’t it seem that twenty-four gallons would fill your bathtub? It’s like this toilet was costing me a bath a day, and based on my water bill and a five-minute investigation, a bath costs me about a dollar in water. So the self-flusher was costing me a dollar a day, or $7 total by the time I realized all this.

I could live with a dollar a day. I can’t live with $30 a month. $365 a year would kill me. That’s like three trips to the grocery store to feed my hungry hordes at home.

A few more days went by, and now I was $10 poorer, through no fault of my own (save the fact I didn’t do anything to fix the dang thing).

Then the wife noticed it.

Action was demanded.

I went into the bathroom, got down on my knees with a flashlight, and examined the thing. Between self-flushes you could hear a slight trickle. Not a steady flow, but a couple of tinkling drops every couple of seconds. Water was not leaking out of the bowl or the tank or around the floor (thankfully! – I once rented a house with a few buddies that had an actual hole in the floor of the upstairs bathroom, right next to the toilet). No choice now but to roll up my sleeves – and lift the porcelain lid off the tank.

In theory I know how a toilet works. In practice, I am two left arms with ten thumbs. Believe me, I know. About a year ago the downstairs toilet needed that level thingie replaced, so, feeling manly, I went to Home Depot, bought a toilet repair/replacement kit, and cracked open my tool box. I drained the tank, removed the old parts, put the new ones in, followed the directions to a T … and it just wouldn’t flush. I even removed everything and started over again. No luck. Wound up calling in a plumber and spending $250 to get everything working.

I vowed that would never happen again.

So it was with trepidation I glanced around the interior of the toilet tank. Ah! Intuitively, I knew what the problem was. The flapper, that circular rubber thing attached to the chain to the toilet handle, the thing that lets the water out of the tank to flush the bowl – that’s where the water was leaking. And after it drip-drip-dripped for nineteen minutes, enough water would have left the tank to make the tower thingie pour more water back in. That’s the reason for the self-flushing!

Proud, I realized I had to get my hands went. Literally. The old flapper looked about twenty-years old and appeared warped, noticeably so. My gut told me that replacing this rubber piece would solve the problem. I unhinged it from the base and the chain and dried it off. Time to go to Home Depot.

Well, not just yet. The old flapper rode shotgun with me in the Impala all afternoon. I found excuses not to go to Home Depot – too far, out of the way, need one of the girls to go with me, etc. All the while the toilet brooded quietly, unusable, in the upstairs bathroom, a coat hanger forbidding the tower thingie from filling the flapper-less tank.

Four more days went by. Total cost to date: $15.

By this time it was mid-week and I didn’t foresee the going-to-the-dentist-ness that is going-to-Home-Depot materialize until this weekend. The wife was definitely not happy with an inoperative toilet brooding strategically between all our bedrooms. Neither was I, so I put the old flapper back on and figured I’d revisit the battle scene this Saturday.

What do you think happened?

By Odin’s Beard the toilet works fine now! Just fine. No more self-flushing. No more wasting water. It flushes when you move the handle, and that’s it. Not a peep, not a drip, nothing when not in use.

Must be the magic I work with my hands, I guess. So, for now, we’ll keep everything just the way it was, and everything will continue working normally and perfectly forever and ever.